Wei hrn, I've been trying to educate myself on the differences a lot recently because I wasn't too sure which was right for me either. Let me explain in a nutshell what I think the key differences are.

Electric is great if you need portability and have no exhaust ducting. Like if you have a bakery in a shopping mall, gas would need ducting for fumes. Whereas with an electric oven I dont think it's legally required as it is with gas. With electric you can just move the oven to another location and all you need is power, no gas line or ducting.

you can also have different temperatures on different decks, very nice feature. You can bake bread on one deck and patisserie on another. I think some gas ovens do something similar but the cost for this option on a gas oven is huge. I haven't looked into it too much but I may, since I would love to be able to have different temps on each deck. It depends what you do, if you have a wholesale business and bake nothing but baguettes then this feature is not needed. Some of my breads need falling temperatures and some don't, that is where this option is nice.

Lastly, electric ovens can be turned on with a automatic timer so that when someone arrives in the morning for example, it is hot and ready to bake. It is illegal to do this with gas.

But convenience comes at a price.

My repair guy says electric units have more problems down the road especially cheaper units. Sometimes they have issues with baking evenly.

Electricity and gas are different prices all over but here in California it costs (far) less to operate a gas oven. I've heard running electric (for a business) can easily be a $600 extra cost added to your expenses.

I had a deposit on an electric Guyon oven, but after hearing all this information from multiple sources I pulled out, and am glad I did! I hear Guyon makes great ovens but I don't want to see that electricity bill. I believe that with gas you have less parts to break and maintain over time.

Our family business has a Bongard gas deck oven. It bakes fantastic but my dad is not satisfied with the build quality. Our new repair company doesn't like Bongard and says simply, "would you buy a French car?" lol, now I am looking at German ovens for my business. I'm leaning towards Werner and Phleiderer ovens, the model is the Matador hearth deck oven. They can be seen at www.geminibe.com. Ive also heard good things of Wachtel but they are hard to buy in the states, however Gashor is the same oven apparently (long story) and they have good distribution and support out of new jersey. Check out www.Cinchbe.com. Hope this helps, cheers!

Your comments are pretty much spot on regarding the electric/gas deck ovens. There are no gas deck ovens I know of that can have seperate temperatures on each deck. Once you get into the tunnel ovens you can control the bake by deck speed, however the temp is still the same.

The German ovens are good, however I feel they are slightly over engineered. The Italians pretty much make the best ovens on the market right now. I have to admit, however, that Empire (I am the Oven Installation Supervisor for them) has its deck oven manufactured for them in Italy. The problem with an over engineered oven is the cost of maitenance. At Empire one of the things that is important to us is the prinicipal of zero down time. We want an oven that has minimal things to go wrong and want parts to be super available if and when they do fail. I have heard many stories of customers being down for a protracted time while waiting for parts from Germany or France. Empire stocks all possible replacement parts in New York with immediate availability. Many of the parts we use are functionally equivalent with parts from places such as Grainger.

All original site content copyright 2015 The Fresh Loaf unless stated otherwise. Content posted by community members is their own. The Fresh Loaf is not responsible for community member content. If you see anything inappropriate on the site or have any questions, contact me at floydm at thefreshloaf dot com. This site is powered by Drupal and Mollom. It is part of the Federated Media Publishing - Food channel. Click here for advertising information.